Why does our society ignore the environmental problems that plague
our planet?
This biologist offers one explanation.
story and photos by Carl N. McDaniel 64

As the Boeing 737 accelerated past homes, restaurants, and the Parliament
House, Mary and I peered intently out our cabin windows, holding
cameras ready. Upon clearing the runway, the captain guided the
aircraft over the eastern shore of the central Pacific island of
Nauru, where my wife and I could view from the air the devastation
we had been walking amongst for the past month.

Newly
mined areas of whitish-tan coral pinnacles contrasted starkly with
the tombstone gray of oxidized coral in areas that had been mined
decades ago. This aerial scene, and my previous month on Nauru,
confirmed the assessment of my economist colleague, John Gowdy,
and me. The Nauruans had traded their pleasant island and once-durable
culture for a short-term economic gain and the devastation of their
home.

After
gaining their independence in 1968, the Nauruans embraced a Western
market approach to living. Lured by the rewards of an economic system
adopted by the rest of the planet, they liquidated their natural
capital by selling the phosphate ore that lay just beneath the surface
of their eight-square-mile island. In return, the Nauruans gained
a brief period of financial wealth, but also the immense challenges
facing all of industrial civilization. Spam, potato chips, and beer
replaced their diets of fresh fruit and fish and created a population
plagued by obesity and diabetes. Alcoholism, cancer, stress, and
technology-associated accidents became common. With only scraps
of their native vegetation left, the Nauruans are now unable to
feed themselves, and the phosphate that pays for their imports is
almost gone.

I am
a biologist. Nauru is what natural scientists call a test-tube experiment,
similar to those conducted on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Mangaia,
Mangareva, and a host of other islands scattered across our oceans.
Their histories demonstrate clearly that human habitation, since
the advent of agriculture, will inevitably deplete natural resources
and lead to cultural collapse.

Nauru,
however, is different. It is not an illiterate, stone-age culture
that failed, but rather part of a modern, technological, scientific,
and economic society that ran its course to disaster. Yet, the Nauruans
appear outwardly unmoved by their predicament. And we in the larger
world ignore or dismiss this 100-year experiment as not being relevant
to us, just as we do with other cultural histories that might guide
us to durable patterns of habitation. Why isnt our own society
paying more attention?